TAPS is a survivor-run group that helps victims of sex trafficking to break free. You can reach us at https://www.facebook.com/TraffickingandProstitutionServicesOnline/ We also help family members and other loves ones to "retrieve" someone they feel is either trapped into sex work. If you are a parent - you can get help at www.swanfellowship.webs.com. This is the author's personal opinion and since written in the USA is protected under rights of free speech. (702) 488-1127.

Let me explain something - I was raped at 17 years of age. I was also raped when I was 15 years old and again at 19 years old I was sexually abused by my father starting when I was 8 years old I assure you that when I was a 17 year old victim - I could not have kicked off a petition like this with a Cosmo article, and a huge press campaign to be held at the Sacramento Press Club.

THIS is what we're talking about when I, and also the author of the Trafficking Act of 2000, Michael Horowitz, are talking about when we are trying to tell you that this movement has been HIJACKED. I'd be willing to bet we have another Samoly Mam on our hands - or a young girl who is just signing something she's been asked to sign by adults in power over her. Below is a letter I've written to the Sacramento Press Club and I'm copying to the Associated Press.

My dad was bigger than me - and an attorney. I fought back. My rapists were bigger than me. i fought back. One of them was my employer. I fought back. My traffickers were bigger and richer and more famous then me. I fought back. I fought back then against impossible odds and I'm not stopping now. I REFUSE to stand by and see us put from one house of being pimped into another and have that called "rescue". I am NOT a VICTIM and REFUSE to let other people tell society what to call me.

Dear Respected Members of the Press:

My name is Jody Williams If you check news clippings at www.hightechmadam.com - you'll find some dating back to 1987 that establish in black and white that I am the founder of the modern day sex trafficking movement itself. There were only three people preceding me in this work in their fashion.

Of course we have the original founder of the anti-slavery movement itself Wilber Wilberforce in the 1700's calling out to stop slavery. In 1979, Lois Lee opened Children of the Night, and their hotline for "prostitutes". Realize there was no official term for "trafficking victim" in 1979 - because people viewed sex trafficking back then much the same as little green aliens today. Her hotline and home were to place girls who had been subject to prostitution because the existing shelters and programs didn't acknowledge their special needs - and also because they were raped and violated within their programs as well.

While Lois started the first hotline and home for teen prostitutes - she did not call out for a whole country to change it's views and systems. She only focused on saving the kids. If she had tried to take on something where she'd be accused of being "crazy" - she wouldn't have been able to run a home caring for these kids.

Neither did Linda Lovelace in 1980 found this movement when she came forward as being forced to film "Deep Throat" and prostitute with a gun pointed at her with the release of her book "Ordeal". Linda was scooped up by the anti-pornography people who used her to lobby to have pornography abolished. She did not call out for this country to change the way it treated these victims.

I however was a victim and a witness not to just the horrors of street prostitution and their pimps - but also to actual sex trafficking during Iran Contra, and oil deals that were being negotiated as well back in the 1980's. I also witnessed what has now been recorded as the worst war on prostitutes in our history - which was in Los Angeles in the 1980's. This is when we had a record number of murders of prostitutes, as well as abuse through what led to the historic Rampart lawsuits against LAPD.

These victims, male and female, had nowhere to go. No one would even believe them back then - let alone help them. If someone was over 18 years of age, as I was - we couldn't go to Children of the Night. Which is why I put together a warehouse for the first "safe house" in history two blocks from Van Nuys Police Station. THIS is why the media dubbed me the "high tech madam" in 1984. With a huge criminal case pending over my head, and my mother's, I couldn't tell the truth back then to the media - especially to a world that wouldn't have believed me if I did. Honestly, do you think in 1984 they would have believed we had all that security, and all those iron bars on that warehouse because we would have teams of men storming the place with guns to try and retrieve victims of sex trafficking rings being sold to drug cartels? Not likely.

So when I stepped up on that first talk show stage in 1987, announced our hotline, our program, AND called out to have this country change the way it responded to these victims when we'd call for help - that makes ME the founder of the modern day sex trafficking movement itself. As a victim/survivor of this, as one who did the first ever "rescues", as the one who set up the first hotline, the first program, the first safe house, and the first one to speak at legislatures, etc. that gives me the right to make this claim.

Now I respect all of you personally. I respect what you're trying to do. But I have to tell you - this movement has been 'hijacked". I am not alone in that view. The author of the Trafficking Act of 2000 has stated so also in an interview in the Review Journal in 2013. Now to my knowledge, Ms. Saar, and your press club, are not survivors. While you are advocates and activists - I dare to say you are not "survivors".

I want to share something with you about the hijacking of this movement that grieves me deeply. I was channel surfing last night and I came across a religious show that was talking about "helping sex trafficking victims". As a watcher of late night TV - I see a lot of the inphomericals to "save the animals" and "save starving children in Africa". The template is the same - they parade around horrific images of these poor voiceless defenseless victims and they ask for your donations to help "save" or "rehabilitate" them.

Well on this show that's what I saw. I saw horrific images, sad music, and talk about a big house to be build in India to "save these poor victims". I couldn't help but cry. Cry at not only how we were being perceived - but also cry that instead of these poor girls being housed in a brothel exploited for money by the pimps they were now going to be placed in yet another house where they are now being exploited by religious "do gooders" using us to raise money in almost an identical manner.

I then saw the petition not asking for our culture, nor our legal system, to change the use of the words for "prostitute", "sex worker" and "rape victim" but to actually change the use of the words within the MEDIA. I'm sorry but these are two completely different arenas.

Our members are "anonymous". To protect their new lives they can not come forward in the public eye to speak their minds. This leaves me to be their "trusted servant" in 12 step terms to speak for them when they ask me to. Sex Workers Anonymous is this country's oldest and LARGEST program of people who have exited the sex industry - whether they were trafficked or forced in any way to be there in the first place or not leave. As their voice - I have watched as I had speaking their voice shrunk further and further into silence. We lost our public service announcements, and our public access TV shows in 1995. We also lost the right to give "opposing viewpoints" in the media about issues that were being heard in the courts and voted upon - and we lost our voice with any media outlet which received federal or church money, as well our voice through large corporations that promote "rape culture" i.e, the sex industry itself.

Now what you're doing is you want to remove our voice from the media and dictionary entirely. I personally find this as completely offensive as going to the Associated Press and asking them to change the use of the word "African American" to "slave". ESPECIALLY if this act of war upon us was to be done right in the middle of the civil war long before we had an African American as president. I have the right to speak on that also because I do have African American blood I am the direct descendant of a union between a plantation owner and a slave who upon being freed he married her.

I also have the right to speak out as a rape survivor, having been raped three times personally - and also being the descendant of the product of a rape. My grandmother had my mother as the product of a rape where she opted not to have an abortion. I was also sexually abused by my father starting at when I was 8 years old So trust me - on all levels I am a "survivor" and I find this petition and upcoming campaign as HIGHLY offensive and view it as a further hijacking of the movement and silencing of our voice.

If you want to know more about why I feel that way - please read the attached letter I've sent to the Associated Press

Sunday, July 26, 2015

On June 19, 2014, I submitted a link to Shelley Lubben about a woman who had been found dismembered in a lake. Instead of asking us if we knew anything about this woman personally, instead of reaching out to her family, instead of seeing if anyone else on the porn shoot might be in danger - Shelley Lubben responded by putting the link up on her website, crediting someone else for submitting it to her on June 20th entirely, and then she solicits people to "buy her CD". Wow - profiting off the death of a porn star. Sounds just like a pimp does it? In Sex Workers Anonymous we recognized that just like how AA has their "dry drunk" or someone who acts just like a drunk without drinking - there are people who can act just like a "whore" or "pimp" without being in the sex industry. It eventually leads to relapse. Which based on her blond hair, excessive makeup and her husband having just lost his job - I would not be surprised if this one walks the same road I saw Linda Lovelace walk. The porn industry used her up too for their fund raisers - and once she started actually needing some help back for her kidney transplant they kicked her to the curb literally. Just as I understand other groups are starting to distance themselves from her now that she's showing some signs of needing help as well. When are people like Shelley going to realize that these "armchair Christians" are only going to accept you while you're raising money for them - not at their dinner tables or into their real lives. We are the only ones who understand "us". Shelley you need a meeting because flushing the pills down your toilet is what addicts do instead of going to a meeting. It last what three days? You said yourself that you'd "sit around talking about God and using meth" with your current husband - honey you've just switched to booze and pills. You both need help. Please get to a meeting. They have NA meetings online if you can't get to one in Bakersfield. Then again - this might just be a ruse to get some porn company to pay her a lot of money to "come back out of retirement" like they did Linda Lovelace. I've seen it all before folks. This whole Christian thing could just be to get your address contact and then when she does her "coming out of retirement porn video" then she gets paid more money than she would if she'd just stayed in the biz where young girls do rule the internet. If she cared about these women for "real" - then she would have asked us what we know about the woman, reached out to the family, or checked to see if anyone else on the shoot is in danger LIKE WE DID. www.sexworkersanonymous.net

I guess I should address why I'm even talking about this. Remember we formed in 1987. Shelly formed the Pink Cross about 1991 if I remember. So when she first started up - I tried to reach out to her. I wanted to know more about what she was doing so I could give referrals out to people who call the hotline. So I requested information on what her group was doing. I got basically no response at all. Which I didn't understand. If she was building a group to help people leave the porn industry - certainly she must know how hard this was going to be. We'd just spent YEARS trying to find solutions that worked. I had just been traveling the USA, doing experiments and research, and thinking about all the work we had to put into creating a program that was effective and was working here I was seeing this woman just opening up an office, turning on a phone, and thinking it was all going to work by magic. Just as I had originally before I got a rude awakening. So I also wanted to help is why I reached out. Certainly she'd want to have other ex-sex workers around her? Women who had been out a while and she could lean on rather than always having people lean on her I thought.

But I was wrong. I got no response back when I'd call. No one would even explain to me what it was that her program did. Then I remembered seeing her at the AVN awards on a TV show. She was there literally right before this woman was going to find out if she'd won. Her "pink cross" women were actually looking like a cult to me. They had their pink t-shirts on, they all looked alike, they sounded alike, I mean it was creepy. They were asking this woman to leave her hotel room and "come with them" but they weren't explaining what that meant. It looked like they were pressuring her. I could tell that the porn actress wanted to see if she won. Of course she wanted to see if she'd won. I mean you're not going to get her to leave five minutes before they announce if she's won or not. No one I can think of is going to walk away before they find out if they've won an award. I mean heck it's why they invented the awards in the first place!

Because I remember the porn industry BEFORE the awards. Men and women in porn were looked at like freaks. They would have people spit on them as they walked down the street and they would be called "freaks". Porn stars were looked at like total deviants and perverts. I mean "how could you even think of letting a camera film you nude and then splash it all over a screen?" was the general culture view back then. You couldn't rent an apartment, buy a car, or even get a part-time job if they recognized your face. You were considered the absolute scum of society. The money wasn't enough to put up with that kind of nonsense. The producers were the ones making the money - not the stars. So what was the pay-off here?

The early producers of porn were not like today. To make a porn back then required a lot of money. You had to go around obscenity laws so usually attorney's were involved. You have to make porn appear to be an "art" film so you wouldn't be branded "obscenity" and then people would get arrested and your film burned. So you had to have some semblance of a plot which meant writers. You had cameras that not everyone could operate and they were expensive too. So you had grown adult business men who used to be in control of porn. THEY were the ones making the money. They also had a problem - how are they going to get beautiful people to agree to be filmed if the money was shit?

Now you could get interns to work for free in jobs where there was a future. But there's no future in porn. The older you get, the fatter you get, the less you're going to be in demand for your films. So no intern system would work. Yes you had the early victims of pimps being forced like Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers. But there just weren't enough of those maniac pimps around to make enough actresses to keep the system going. Remember, you can't make one film that's played over and over again. Now - the very industry demands "fresh meat" has to be supplied to it. So how do you keep getting young girls to agree to make films?

Now Playboy had it's mansion. Their system worked because many of those women met and married rich husbands. Look at Gene Simmons and his marriage to Shannon Tweed They met at the mansion and had two kids and she got herself a rock star husband. That was a walking advertisement for the Playboy empire. Other women looked at her, or Barbi Benton and everyone beautiful flocked to Playboy.

So how are you going to get them into YOUR little film? The AVN awards were created. You'd be surprised at what people will do for a trophy. I remember the first awards in a dingy little hall and the girls in tube tops. But this is Los Angeles and there's 1,000's of fashion designers looking to crack into the business. So they decided to dress the women up like for the Academy Awards. Then they realized they could charge the fans to come and meet their "favorite stars" and it became a big money making event. Sponsors wanted in for adult products. This event became marketing central where careers were made. Now you can't ask some woman who has been waiting all year to hear if she's going to win that award to just walk away. They won't do it and the organizers know this. It's another way to have "employee retention".

So the last thing you want to do is come up to someone an hour before they announce the winner and ask her "come and leave with us" like some creepy cult. It won't work. So as I'm watching this on the TV I'm thinking - they need some help. I called over there to talk about how we've done effective interventions to see if I could help. Like suggesting for one thing that asking some women to leave right before she's supposed to get an award with a bunch of girls all wearing the same shirts like some cult might not be effective. It wasn't either by the way - the woman threw them out of her room, lost the award, and then went back to her room to sulk. Frankly that's when I would have gone to talk to her. But again with the wall when I called offering to help. No one wanted to talk to me. So what I figured and went on about my business. Funny - looking back I'm really glad I didn't partner with her and can see everything was for a reason. But back then I had the mistaken idea we were all on the same team and wanted to help.

I thought we were on the same team until I started hearing about events going on around town where they were having speakers come and talk about the industry, and leaving the industry, as well as sex trafficking. I started calling the organizers and offering to come speak. Now previously when I'd call organizer and offer to come speak they'd be very very happy and welcoming . Suddenly I'm getting this very cold reception and I don't know why. I figured I'd go to these events and see what was going on - only when I'd arrive I'd have security tell me I wasn't ALLOWED IN THE BUILDING.

Like what? You're kidding me right - not allowed in the building like I'm some kind of terrorist? Of course even more curious now why I'm being blocked from even hearing what's going on - I ask around for some tapes of these events. I get them and then I hear why I'm being blocked from the building. I never heard such horse shit in my life. What was even funnier was that each time Shelley is telling her story - it changes. I mean doesn't she realize that people will remember her story and know when it changes? So now I'm hearing she went from a porn star who used to literally walk into business establishments and then tell the owner she wasn't leaving until she turned a trick and got some money from him so she could supply her drug habit - to now she's a "trafficking victim"? Then her drug dealer who became her husband - but now she's a 'trafficking victim"? Okay who exactly trafficked her? I'm not hearing about anyone but her and her now husband in the story. I'm lost. This is making absolutely no sense to me whatsoever and frankly she's becoming what I'm struggling against.

One of the biggest problems I had when I first started doing the alternative sentencing work where we'd take programs into the jails, and I was working with the probation department, and social services - was over coming their stereotypical views of us "never changing". I used to hold these lectures where I'd be sitting in the audience as people walked into the meeting room. Then I'd be meeting and talking with them over coffee until the event was ready to start. Then I'd stand up and introduce myself and watch their mouths fly open. I'd say "didn't realize it was me huh?" I'd have them confront what it was they thought an ex-hooker would be vs. what I was now in recovery. People would admit that they didn't trust us and didn't want to work with us because in their experience we "never changed". We'd show up to lectures stoned. We'd rip people off. We'd lie. In other words, the dry drunk for the alcoholic is that we'd act like whores but say we were out.

So I'm working against this stereotype by showing up dressed like a lady to events, being clean, acting responsible - and here I'm seeing her looking like a porn star, made up like a porn star, talking like a porn star, and falling around the stages like she's drunk and changing her story like a child caught in a lie. Not a good image for us. So I tried talking to her about this because I'm now seeing a lot of my work going down the drain. Now I'm not only getting people blocking me from these events because she's said she doesn't want me there which means she's acting like we're two hookers fighting over a corner or something - and to top it off when she acts like this other people think I'm going to act like that.

Sure enough today one of my biggest problems is having to convince people I'm not like her or Annie Lobert. When I call say a PR company and start to try to talk to them - I can hear this wall of ice and hostility. So I just bring it out in the open - you're thinking I'm like Shelley or Annie right? They sigh and say "yeah". So I explain how we're different and then after I hear this visible sigh of relief - then we can move forward with our business. But those are the people who are reasonable and I can get to talk to me. I have 50 other people who won't even talk to me at all because in their minds I'm going to be like those two. I mean I can't even open my mouth now and say I run a program out of Vegas without getting this weird look. I then say "no I'm not Annie or Shelley" and then I hear the sigh of relief and a giggle. Then they tell me how crazy they think these two broads are. Yes they get on TV because they make for great TV. They don't even realize the TV is putting them on there not because they're good at what they do but because they're good TV. People point at the TV and laugh and that sells commercials. But the reality is that it now has made my job 100 times harder because I can't open my mouth now to someone in the porn industry without first getting them to understand I'm not Shelley nor like Shelley. It's so bad some people even tell me they checked out my page before calling and upon seeing that Shelley IS NOT on my friend's list - then they felt comfortable enough to call.

This isn't the only way my life has become harder because of Shelley. There's her "minions" as I call them. I don't know if she even knows about these people. But they create face book profiles. Then they ask to be added as a friend. Next thing I know they're attacking me with bible quotes and telling me they belong to Pink Cross. They just start lashing out at me and I have no idea what they're talking about. All I can do is block them. I've had to tell all of our members not to friend me because of them because they started attacking our members. Anyone who would show up as a our "friend" they'd go to them and start attacking. At first I thought they'd die down after a few months - but it's like years now and I still get these attacks. Considering I haven't even spoken to Shelley in years I don't know why they're attacking me. It got so bad last year that I had to report it to Shelley and the police. I took the threats to the Bakersfield Police, and sent a copy of the letter to Shelley. They did stop - for about a year.

Where it's really sad however is her leftovers. Every now and then I get a call from someone who is "making an amends" to me. They'll call me up and tell me they "want to apologize for what they did" to me. They admit to horrible slandering and attacks. I mean the stuff they tell me they did to me is truly awful. They admit calling up other churches and telling them I was running child pornography rings. I mean just sick crazy stuff. They all insist that Shelley "made them do it" and now they've "seen the light" and "feel awful" and they "want to make amends" to me.

I say "fine - make amends". They go "what?" I say "yeah - I want you to go to every person you lied to about me and I want you to tell them you lied and tell them the truth. You want to make amends to me? Go and fix the damage you did. Because I can wipe my ass with your apology and it changes nothing. The damage is done and I'm not going to undo it by going to these people and saying you lied and now you're sorry. It won't fix it. So YOU go to those people and YOU fix it." Because an "amends" isn't "I'm sorry". An "amends" is about repairing the damage - not apologizing and then walking away to leave someone else to clean up your mess. It's about taking responsibility for your actions. You break it - you buy it.

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jody Williams. You can read about my work with trafficking victims in John Quinones book "Heroes Among Us" that you can google actually and read online. I also have decades of news clippings at http://www.hightechmadam.blogspot.com/2010/08/news-clippingsbiography.html showing that I've not only been working in the field of helping sex trafficking victims for almost 40 years now - but I'm also a survivor myself.

Unlike the "typical" (if there is such a thing) victim of trafficking - my case was a little different. The family of pimps who "turned me out" came not only from a literal family of pimps that had been doing this generation after generation (spoken about openly by Richard Pryor as this was his family), but they trained me in how to do what they do - in other words how to find, and exploit other young men and women into the sex industry.

So I understand the mind of a victim - as well as that of a pimp. I wanted to talk about this national push towards heavier legislation of stiffer penalties against the pimps in the sincere desire and belief that it's going to do something to deter this problem.

It's not.

Pimps know about existing laws that can already put them in prison for long terms. They know about laws like kidnapping, transporting prostitutes across state lines, even child pornography when their victims are below the age of consent. Since the average prostitute is "turned out" between the ages of 12-13 - they already know they're dealing with children - which means much stiffer sentencing if they go to court.

It's because they know they are facing serious prison time that they "brainwash" their victims to not only make sure they won't testify against them - but also to make sure they don't make a "reputable" witness on the stand. They use nicknames so that the victims don't even know the pimp's real legal birth names. Everything about what a pimp does is to make sure they aren't prosecuted.

Even down to showing that many of them have connections with law enforcement, politicians, the correctional system, and even judges in their "pockets". Look at how Eliot Spitzer was using prostitutes when he was the District Attorney for New York for example. A man like him is not going to let a prostitute hit the stand against a pimp - when it's his behind that's also going to be "outted" in the process. He is not a unique case.

They use violence also to show these victims that they'll never make it to the stand alive if they were to turn against them and testify.

Not that these threats are just idle either. I myself had to deal with not only pimps trying to kill me when I left the "family" and they were concerned about me turning state's evidence that was so bad I had to literally change my appearance dramatically and literally go live "underground" for a while to throw them off my scent - but I had cops trying to kill me too out of their fear I'd testify against them for their activities in my brothel and also their connections with these mobsters. If you check my clipping - you'll see that I had videotapes being made of my clients - which included when they were police officers. Modern prostitutes these days also have things like cell phone records, and cameras in their phones - and it's very easy to leave "traces" of seeing a prostitute these days that is of grave concern to men who have "something to lose".

You have to realize that I was a madam in Los Angeles in the 80's - which meant that I was in the whole middle of the Iran-Contra fiasco. I saw the trucks coming off the boats with boxes of cocaine and AK-47's being flooded into South Central Los Angeles. I knew the politicians who were behind this - disgusing this whole thing as a "gang" affair. You have to know I had politicians and police officers that did not want to see me hit a witness stand back then.

When I managed to escape this with my life - I knew that many more were having the same situation. You can't turn to the "traditional" sources in many cases for help because the really big traffickers have their connections everywhere.

The stories go on - I get calls from local teen runaway shelters about how when the prostitutes have run there for shelter that pimps show up with machine guns demanding their 'property" back. The shelters don't report this out of fear they'll lose their funding and donors if word gets out that they can't protect these kids. So no one really hears about what's really going on out there as to how the "system" can't really protect these prostitutes.

If you want to get more pimps behind bars - then you have to do something about the corruption within the system and to make an environment that is safer for the prostitute to come forward to testify.

Or you can have prosecutors create cases that don't rely on the word of a prostitute as witness against them. I know this is possible because of a trafficking case in Hawaii where the DA flew me out there as an "expert witness" against a trafficker when he couldn't get the women to agree to testify against the trafficker. After hearing what I was going to say to the jury - the pimp plea bargained. The DA told me he never would have got the guy behind bars without using me to help - so I know there's other ways to do this besides relying on the testimony of a prostitute.

Here's my very valid concern about what's going to happen if they make stiffer penalties against these pimps - that more people are going to die than do already. It is already out of fear of prosecution that these pimps will kill potential witnesses. Another modern twist is that these pimps will actually profit from the murder by selling their organs on the black market. I know this because that's what's happening in Nevada right now. There's a pimp named Peter Todd who has made two of his prostitutes and a local madam all "disappear". He walks free because there's no trace of his victims - and one of my informants has shown me how the black organ market works here in Nevada to have helped him make the bodies disappear. This is not limited to Nevada either - believe me. The network that I was shown has connections on the west coast and across the USA.

And that's with the existing laws in place. If you push these pimps into a deeper corner with threats of even more hard time - you will not wind up with more of them in prison. You will wind up with more cases of missing prostitutes is what you'll wind up with. Especially when the streets are reporting they can get about $25,000 in one shot for the organs.

The law is not considering these victims' side of the story because very few of them will talk openly and publically. Very few of them even understand what they are going through even - it took me a long time and a lot of work within the program I run with other prostitutes - to even understand my own story myself. So I do feel I have a unique and wholistic perspective of this problem - one that I need to share with you.

If you want more pimps behind bars and to reduce this problem - you need to create an environment that makes it safer for more victims to come forward to testify. Not one where victims are placed behind bars when charged with no crime until they agree to testify either. The system is treating the victims all wrong - and the corruption has placed them in an impossible situation where the only way to try to survive is to either look stupid, or refuse to cooperate.

Now I'm also going to say something that isn't going to be "popular - but the system is also not treating these pimps like they need any help either. Many of the pimps I have known have been literally raised from children to be doing this. They are often the victims of child abuse themselves. Many of them have learning disabilities, and have been through horrible abuse of their own - to have left them with no way of supporting themselves other than through the exploitation of young men and women.

Locking them up does not deter them. I know of what I speak because Sex Workers Anonymous allows in men and women who have a desire to recover. Which means we have had pimps come to us for help. Help we have given and been a part of more than one pimp turning his life around. Honestly - I've seen very few pimps accomplish this without outside help of some kind either. Pimps generally do it until they die - and they do not stop just because they get locked up.

Many pimps will continue to pimp from prison. I've seen the men and women visit them and put money on their books. I've seen them hit the ground running the day they're released to go back to pimping again - because it's all they know.

Currently there is no program in the United States that will offer them any help to quit other than Sex Workers Anonymous either. You will not find one trafficking program that helps the traffickers to quit. While the victims have witnessed violence - it's these pimps who are doing the violence. They need just as much psychological help and help adjusting to life outside of the sex industry - as does the prostitute - if not more. Because while everyone is finally acknowledging that the prostitute is a victim - no one seems ready yet to acknowledge that a pimp can be a victim too.

If you consider this - if you help one prostitute - you help one prostitute. But if you help a pimp - you're helping more than one prostitute that he would be pimping otherwise - for the rest of that man's life.

Pimps in prison just pass the "game" onto the younger men and others who are getting out. They even pimp prisoners while in custody - I've seen them do it for money on the books, food on commissary day, little trinkets, clothing, extra blankets, etc.

Again as I said - the pimps I was turned out with have been doing this for generations. I've seen them released after decades in prison - to be greeted by their prostitutes at the gate and taken right back into the game. All that's going to be accomplished by going after stiffer sentencing for these traffickers - is that you are going to get some headlines for law enforcement.

All on the back of the prostitutes - because then you're going to be placing more of them in a position where pressure is going to be exerted upon them to testify against these more numerous arrests. Which to me means more prostitutes being threatened with their lives and killed in the interest of politicans and police officers wanting to get headlines - and not because they want to do something to help the victims.

If you want to help the victims - you need to do something about the corruption within the system. You need to create a safer environment for the prostitute to testify in - or create laws which allow for other methods of building a case against a trafficker other than resting on the backs of their victims. You also need to create "proper" aftercare programs for the female AND male victims of the sex industry. This also means including the male homosexual victims of this trafficking crisis - something I'm also seeing ignore.

Frankly, some of the most horrible cases I've ever heard about in the some 250,000 men and women I've talked to over these years I've been doing this world wide have been the male victims who are turned out often as young as 10 years old into the world of gay prostitution and pornography. Yet I can't find one trafficking victim program right now in the United States that takes male victims except Sex Workers Anonymous - and Children of the Night. That is not enough to address this problem.

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About Me

I've been helping men and women leave the sex industry since 1987. Some were forced - some were not. Some thought they weren't and with time realized they were. Some thought they were and with time realized they weren't. Which is why I just focus on this - if you want help to leave any part of the sex industry for any reason - just get in touch. I run Sex Workers Anonymous, Trafficking & Prostitution Services, as well as the American Trafficking Institute. I produce www.blogtalkradio.com/stopsextrafficktalk, and the magazine "Sanity Today". I also help investigators and the authorities with sex trafficking cases, and families help their loved ones leave the streets. Currently I'm organizing www.boycottsnoop.com to demand an acknowledgment of the damage that was done to women during his 2003 tour and www.pimpalert.com to help caught pimps who are dangerous and on the streets. Our book on the history of this field "Anatomy of a Movement" is almost done.